2020 General Presidential Election Thread

[frank ryan]

Yep, I should probably stop posting politics until this election is over. The whole thing is a parody to me at this point.

Though I do also find this funny:

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I guess they learned all this by watching the lefty protests.

You sound like Ted there. Statements like this can make it hard to discern your sarcasm at times.

[frank ryan]

Sounds like Trump's playbook for election night and soon after:

https://www.axios.com/trump-claim-el...source=twitter

President Trump has told confidants he'll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he's "ahead," according to three sources familiar with his private comments. That's even if the Electoral College outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania.

Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.

For this to happen, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia.
Why it matters: Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud.

Details: Many prognosticators say that on election night, Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania — though the state's final outcome could change substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days.

Trump's team is preparing to claim baselessly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night, then Democrats would have "stolen" the election.
Trump's advisers have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks, but this is the first account of Trump explicitly discussing his election night intentions.
What they're saying: Asked for comment, the Trump campaign's communications director Tim Murtaugh said, "This is nothing but people trying to create doubt about a Trump victory. When he wins, he's going to say so."

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller predicted that Trump "will be re-elected handily and no amount of post-election Democratic thievery will be able to change the results."

Reality check: Mail-in ballots counted after Election Day as set forth in state-by-state rules are as legitimate as in-person votes recorded on Nov. 3.

Many states won't be done counting mail ballots by Tuesday night.

In Pennsylvania, state law prevents election officials from counting mail-in ballots before Election Day.
Night-of counts may be deceptive. It could be days, if not weeks, before we know who won Pennsylvania. If it's a close race, this could also be true for other states, given the record numbers of Americans who voted by mail this year.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said on NBC's "Meet the Press" today that there could be 10x as many mail ballots this year than in 2016, "so, yes, it will take longer" to count.
"I expect that the overwhelming majority of ballots in Pennsylvania, that's mail-in and absentee ballots, as well as in-person ballots, will be counted within a matter of days," Boockvar said.
What we're watching: Miller, on ABC's "This Week," predicted 290+ electoral votes for Trump on election night, and he claimed Democrats are "just going to try to steal it back after the election."

He described any prospective challenges by Democrats as "hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense."

[Northwestcoug]

Apropos of what DH posted, fascist stuff like this needs to be repudiated with a convincing anti-Trump win:

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Calling political opponents treasonous and demanding criminal proceedings against them is full-scale banana republic. Yet he does this every day, and it barely registers a blip from most of the GOP ranks. How did it come to this?

[Now who’s the dean?]

Very interesting column from N. Givens. (Thanks to ER Cougar for the share on fb). A lot of this resonated with me. Including the following.:



https://publicsquaremag.org/editoria...ElsH77PBQLiIzM

Stuff like the following is a little hard to swallow (because it’s laughable), but I appreciate that he recognizes that, currently, DT is a greater threat to the republic than anything the left has to offer.

Illiberalism had made essentially no inroads among the elites of the American right prior to Trump.

[Donuthole]

Stuff like the following is a little hard to swallow (because it’s laughable), but I appreciate that he recognizes that, currently, DT is a greater threat to the republic than anything the left has to offer.

Is be curious to know who you think the lauded right wing, pre-Trump illiberals are.

[Uncle Ted]

This is so stupid. Harassing an opponents campaign bus like that is what you expect in a Third World banana republic. Shame on Texas.

Harassing? They were just giving Harris a proper escort... the friendly Texas way. Liberals don't know how to take a joke.

Besides, the Biden/Harris rallies were looking really thin:




So they were just trying to make it look like Biden/Harris have more than 25 supporters.

The Dems' rallies are embarrassing compared to Drumpf's:

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[Uncle Ted]

I think I have seen this movie before... back in 2016:

Forty-One Percent.

I’ve been covering American politics for a long time and I can’t remember a number that so dramatically altered the political community’s perception of a presidential campaign as that number did, last night, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

The source of the number was The Iowa Poll, which has been the gold standard for statewide polling in the United States for decades. The number itself was the percentage of likely voters in Iowa supporting Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

President Trump’s number was 48%, which put him ahead in the “horse race” by 7 percentage points. There was nothing really remarkable about that, in context. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016 by (roughly) nine percentage points.

What was remarkable was Biden’s 41%. What made it doubly disconcerting was the way The Des Moines Register (accurately) described the poll results:

“Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded…”
[...]
That was the other piece of bad news in last night’s Iowa Poll release. It showed that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst had pulled ahead of her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. Her lead (46%-to-42%) was within the margin of error, but it wasn’t Ms. Ernst’s lead that Democrats were focused on. It was the “faded” support for Ms. Greenfield, which almost exactly tracked the “faded” support for Joe Biden.

For Democrats, last night’s Iowa Poll was the worst possible news at the worst possible moment. It foretold close results in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It undermined the Biden campaign’s momentum and morale. And it fracked Democrats’ self- confidence.

What had seemed reasonably certain no longer seemed certain at all.

https://41jellis.medium.com/forty-on...t-a70c68a4dc22

[Now who’s the dean?]

Is be curious to know who you think the lauded right wing, pre-Trump illiberals are.

Come on. The religious right might be the most illiberal movement in modern America. Anti-globalization, xenophobia, ridiculous conspiracy theories didn’t start with Trump. Trump’s stated desire (who knows what he really thinks about anything) to unentangle America from democracy building around the globe is more liberal than his GOP predecessors. It’s not a binary classification, but the idea that illiberalism didn’t exist on the right before Trump is silly.

[Donuthole]

Come on. The religious right might be the most illiberal movement in modern America. Anti-globalization, xenophobia, ridiculous conspiracy theories didn’t start with Trump. Trump’s stated desire (who knows what he really thinks about anything) to unentangle America from democracy building around the globe is more liberal than his GOP predecessors. It’s not a binary classification, but the idea that illiberalism didn’t exist on the right before Trump is silly.

So you can’t name any. Got it.

[Now who’s the dean?]

So you can’t name any. Got it.

Yep. That’s it.

[old_gregg]

Very interesting column from N. Givens. (Thanks to ER Cougar for the share on fb). A lot of this resonated with me. Including the following.:



https://publicsquaremag.org/editoria...ElsH77PBQLiIzM

yes. but for the grace of trump being an incompetent dipshit go we. bannon is very smart and competent and thus very scary.

[USUC]

So...Kamala is really going with this, huh? Here's to 4 years of a healthy Joe. Yeesh.

https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/sta...994289154?s=19

[Omaha 680]

So...Kamala is really going with this, huh? Here's to 4 years of a healthy Joe. Yeesh.

https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/sta...994289154?s=19

Lol. "Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place." Kamala always has had a real knack for saying the quiet part out loud.

[UVACoug]

The most damaging thing Trump has done is embolden the far left. That's the number one reason he must go, in my opinion. Extreme partisan ideologues on both sides it what will destroy this country. The polarization that has resulted from the Trump presidency is one of the worst things that has ever happened to this country.

[Uncle Ted]

So...Kamala is really going with this, huh? Here's to 4 years of a healthy Joe. Yeesh.

https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/sta...994289154?s=19

Well, there goes 34.3% of the vote for Biden/Harris in Miami-Dade county.